Free The Bughouse Affair: A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery by Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini Page B

a flyer from a man hawking the Single Tax doctrine and pretended to read it by the light of a flickering torch. All the while her head and her eyes continued their restless search.
    An elderly chap leaning on a cane, walking haltingly nearly ten yards away, struck Sabina as a likely candidate. But no, the dip passed him by. A well-attired man carrying a malaca walking stick. No. A tall blond gent dressed in a broadloom suit and gaudy vest. No.
    More wandering. More pretended interest in the shows and wares. Sabina was careful to maintain a measured distance, with her small body shielded from the woman’s view by those of the larger men.
    In front of the bright red-and-yellow coach belonging to the purveyor of Dr. Wallmann’s Nerve and Brain Tonic, the woman stopped again. Stood watching as a fat, middle-aged man wearing a plug hat and sporting a gold watch chain questioned the pitchman, then examined one of the brown bottles as if he were having difficulty making up his mind whether or not to buy it. Sabina sensed he was the dip’s choice even before the woman sidled up next to him, stretching an arm up as she did so to snatch the Horner pin free from her hat.
    Sabina elbowed in behind her, calling out a warning that was lost in the sudden shrieking of an organ grinder’s monkey. The fat man suddenly twisted, clutching at his corporation, and the dip had his purse. She was turning away when Sabina reached her and caught hold of her right arm, bending it so that she dropped the purse, then pinning the arm behind her back. The pickpocket emitted a cry of pain, then a curse, and began struggling and trying to stab her captor with the hatpin she held in her other hand. Sabina pulled the arm higher, making her cry out again, while she clutched at the dangerously flailing wrist.
    Men surged in around them, voices raised in alarmed query. Sabina cried, “Help me, she’s a pickpocket!” to the man nearest her—a mistake, as it turned out. The man made a clumsy effort to assist, which earned him a puncture wound from the slashing pin. He yelled in pain and reeled into the two women, throwing Sabina off balance and allowing the dip to squirm out of her grasp. A hatpin thrust grazed Sabina’s arm, then she felt a painful blow to her ribs—and the woman lunged away past the medicine pitchman’s wagon, bowling him over when he tried to stop her.
    Sabina gave chase, but to no avail. Once again her quarry managed to escape into the milling crowd.
    As galling as this was, there was some small comfort in the fact that she now knew who she was after. She had had a clear look at the woman’s face during their struggle, and was certain of her identity: Clara Wilds, who had evidently forsaken the extortion racket for the equally lucrative trade of cutpurse.
    What made the identification even more provocative was the fact that Clara Wilds’s last-known consort was Dodger Brown, the slippery yegg John suspected of being responsible for the recent string of home burglaries.

 
     
    10
     
    QUINCANNON
     
    He was late reaching the agency on Thursday morning, through no fault of his own. The cable car he regularly rode to Market Street from his apartment building on Leavenworth failed to come by—some sort of mechanical problem, probably, as all too often happened with the cable and trolley lines. The distance was too far to walk; he hired a cab instead, with every intention of adding the cost to the Great Western expense account.
    Sabina was present when he arrived, but about to depart. She was in the process of putting on her long coat over her shirtwaist and bell-bottomed skirt—a slender vision in no need of the tight corsetting most women favored. He held his scrutiny to a minimum; the tight set of her mouth plainly indicated that she was in no mood today for bandinage.
    He shifted his gaze to his desktop, which was conspicuously bare. “No word yet from Ezra Bluefield,” he said. Messages from the Scarlet Lady’s owner